Mystery Walk

He nodded uneasily.

Bromley stepped closer to the porch. 'I have to ask you these things, Billy. That don't mean I want to.'

'It's okay.'

'Well . . . just when was it that you went down into the Bookers' basement?'

'The last part of April. I didn't mean to go in there, I know it was private property, but ...'

'Why did you decide to go down there in the first place?'

'I heard a . . .' He glanced at his mother, but she was staring out toward the highway, letting him handle this on his own. 'I heard a tapping. Behind the basement door.'

'Did you go back there again, after you . . . saw what you said you saw?'

'No sir. I couldn't go back to that place again.'

Bromley looked into Billy's eyes for a few seconds, then sighed and nodded. 'I believe you, boy. Now can I speak to your momma alone for just a minute?'

Billy took his lamp, leaving hers burning on the wicker table, and went inside. Fireflies winked in the woods, a chorus of toads began burping down at the green pond. She waited for him to speak.

'After Dave Booker killed them,' Bromley said in a distant, wearied voice, 'he stuffed Julie Ann's body beneath a bed, and he locked Katy's in a closet. It was . . . like he wanted to get rid of them, or pretend it hadn't happened. We searched for Will all through that house, up in the woods, under the front porch, everywhere we could think of. We looked for bones in the furnace, got a diver to go down into the well behind the Booker place, even dragged Semmes Lake. We looked through that coal pile, too, but we . . . never dug up the floor underneath it.' He took his cap off and scratched his scalp. 'That's where Will was, all the time. His little body was . . . curled up in a croaker sack. Looked like he might have been beat to death with a shovel or somethin', from the broken bones. Ah, this whole thing has been mighty shitty, 'scuse my French.' He worked the cap back down onto his head again. 'Link Patterson, Cale Joiner, and me found Will this morning. I've had to handle some bad things in my time, but this is the ...' He suddenly reached out and gripped a porch post, his knuckles whitening. 'Mrs. Creekmore?' he said hoarsely, as if fighting emotions he knew a sheriff wasn't supposed to show. 'I'm so sorry about what happened to you last night. I should've . . . done something, I guess. ...'

'No need.'

'You . . . know what kind of things are said about you, don't you? I've heard 'em too, but I never gave them no account.' His mouth worked, forming the words that were hard to find. 'Are they true?'

She didn't answer. She knew he wanted desperately to understand, to know the secrets in her mind, and for an instant she wanted to trust him because maybe—just maybe—there was within this bearish man the spark of his own Mystery Walk. But then the instant passed, and she knew she could never bring herself to trust anyone in Hawthorne ever again.

'I don't believe in ghosts!' the sheriff said indignantly. 'That's just . . . fool's talk! But can you answer me this? How did Billy know Will Booker was under that coal pile?' There was a long silence, broken only by the frogs and crickets. And then Bromley said, 'Because he's like you, isn't he?'

Ramona's chin lifted slightly. 'Yes,' she said. 'Like me.'

'He's just a little boy! What . . . what in the name of Heaven is his life going to be like, if he's cursed to see ghosts and . . . God knows what else! . . .'

'Is your business finished, sheriff?'

Bromley blinked uncertainly, feeling a raw power in her leveled stare. 'Yes . . . except for one last thing. Jimmy Jed Falconer is a well respected and loved man in this county, and that son of his is a bona fide miracle worker When you jump up and start yellin' 'Murder' you'd best be standing on solid ground unless you want a slander suit slapped on you.'

'Slander? Isn't that saying things that aren't true? Then I've no need to worry, do I? Did that man, or someone from his Crusade, tell you to say that to me?'

'Maybe, maybe not. Just listen to what's said. Now my business is finished.' He turned and stalked to his car, but paused with the door open. 'You know things are never going to be the same for Billy ever again, don't you?' He got into the car and backed off down the road.

Ramona waited until the sheriff's car had gone, then took the lamp and went inside. Billy was sitting in his father's chair in the front room, his lamp and the Mystery of the Missing Chums on a table beside him. She knew that he must've heard everything said on the porch.

'Sheriff Bromley found Will,' he said.

'Yes.'

'But how could it be Will if Will was already dead?'

'I don't think it was Will as you knew him, Billy. I think it was . . . some part of Will that was scared and alone, and he'd been waiting for you to help him.'

Billy frowned, his jaw working. 'Did I help him, Momma?'

'I don't know. But I think that maybe you did; I think that he didn't want to be left lying alone in that basement. Who would want to wake up in the dark, without anyone near to help them?'

Billy had thought about his next question for a long time, and now he had to force himself to ask it. 'Is Will going to Heaven or Hell?'

'I think . . . he's already spent enough time in Hell, don't you?'

'Yes.'

'I'll make our supper now,' Ramona said, and touched the boy's cheekbone. He was over his skittishness from the night before, but there were unanswered questions in his eyes. 'I'll heat up the vegetable broth and fix some corn muffins, how about that?'

'Isn't Daddy ever comin' home?'

'He'll be home, sooner or later. But right now he's scared. Do you understand that not everybody could've seen what was left of Will Booker, and very few could've helped him like you have?'

'I don't know,' he said uncertainly, his face a patchwork of orange light and black shadows.

'I wish I could help you with all of it,' she said softly. She gripped his hand and held it. 'God knows I do, but there are some things you have to find out on your own. But maybe .. . maybe your gram can help you in a way I can't because there's still so much I don't understand myself. . . .'

'Gram help me? How?'

'She can start you over at the beginning. She can reshape you and mold you, just like she molds those pieces she makes on her potter's wheel. She did that for me, too, a long time ago, just as her daddy did for her Your gram can teach you things that I can't.'

He thought about this for a minute, his brow furrowed. He loved his grandmother's place—a white house on three thickly wooded acres with plenty of meandering trails to follow—but what would his father say? 'When would we go?' he asked.

'Why not in the morning? We could catch the bus down at the grocery store and be there by early afternoon. But we'll go only if you want to.'

'What kind of things do I have to learn?'

'Special things,' Ramona said. 'Things you won't learn anywhere else. Some of it will be easy and fun, and some of it . . . won't be; some of it may even hurt. You're standing on the edge between being a child and being a man, Billy, and maybe there are things you can understand better this summer than you could in the next.'

There was a darkly luminous look in Ramona's eyes that both unsettled Billy and sparked his curiosity; it was like seeing something sparkle down along a forest path he'd never dared explore before. He said, 'All right. I'll go.'

'Then you're going to need to get some clothes together, 'cause we might be staying at Gram's for a while. Why don't you get some of your underwear and socks out of your desk, and while you're doing that I'll get my clothes ready too. Then we'll eat supper. All right?'

In the lamplight, Billy opened one of his desk drawers and laid a few pair of Fruit-of-the-Looms out on his bed. Then he rummaged for some socks, his T-shirts, and—his favorite—his Lone Ranger suspenders. His shirts and jeans were hanging in his mother's closet, so he'd have to get to them later. He leaned down and reached under the cot, pulling out a large paper sack; in it was a Dutch Masters cigar box he'd found on the roadside last summer,